Tag: Baroque

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Festival-conference

The Innsbruck Early Music Festival and Haydneum Festival, Eszterháza

Although principally undertaken on opera duty, brief successive visits to two European early music festivals also allowed time to take in a chamber music concert in both venues. While the Innsbruck Early Music Festival is well-established and familiar to early music enthusiasts, that at the palace of Eszterháza, Haydn’s principal place of employment for thirty years, is not. Despite a somewhat isolated location that caused Haydn to complain of feeling cut off from the world, I suspect that it being the home of the Haydneum, a centre for early music recently established on the model of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, will soon result in it having a higher profile.

The first stop was Innsbruck, where the evening after a triumphant first performance of Graupner’s Dido, Königin von Carthago festival-goers were transported up to Ambras Castle, a Renaissance jewel situated above the city. It is there that the majority of the festival’s chamber concerts are given in the spectacular Spanish Hall, that on 26 August being devoted to an intriguing and well-designed programme featuring two composers that at one time or another in the early 18th century might have contributed to making Innsbruck a rival to London. Handel (represented by his Italian cantata Il duello amoroso) seemingly rejected the possibility of employment in Innsbruck, but Mannheim-born Jacob Greber (d. 1731) having failed spectacularly in London did not, becoming Kapellmeister in Innsbruck in 1707. On the evidence of the three cantatas presented, he was a competent if not especially inspired composer, here unkindly cast into the shadows by Handel’s infinitely superior work. In addition to the vocal works, the programme included chamber works featuring recorders by two other German immigrant composers working in London, J C Pepusch and Gottfried Finger.

The vocal performers were the soprano Silvia Frigato, and the French (despite her name) mezzo Mathilde Ortscheidt, a past prizewinner of Innsbruck’s prestigious Cesti Competition and a singer who recently much impressed me in Cimarosa’s L’Olimpiade at Versailles. The instrumental works and support for the singers were provided by members of the Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin. Without being entirely sure of the reason, the concert came over as a rather flat. Was it perhaps a hang-over from the remarkable Dido of the previous day? Both singers sang well enough, although Frigato’s tone sounded at times shrill and thin. By contrast, Ortscheidt produced a rich tone and some impressive chest notes, but neither appeared sufficiently involved in communicating texts or producing interesting embellishments. Much the same might be said of the instrumental playing, which was as competent as would be expected from such an eminent ensemble but rarely arrested the listening ear.

What was missing was vividly illustrated five days later in the course of the concert given by the Capricornus Consort Basel in the magnificent and beautifully restored Apollo Room in the palace of Eszterháza. The instrumental works included the fine B-flat Concerto (no 2) from van Wassenaer’s set of Concerti Armonico and three works by F X Richter that provided a pertinent reminder of just how excellent a composer he is. The only vocal work in the programme was the sacred cantata Il pianto di Maria by G B Ferrandini, Venetian-born but long employed in Munich. At the conclusion of the text, a scribbled note of mine reads, ‘good on one level but there is another’ and indeed the singing of mezzo Olivia Vermeulen seemed curiously uninvolved for such a searing text, underscored as it is by painful chromaticism. Chromaticism emerged almost as the keyword of the programme, nearly all the music being inflected by it, sometimes heavily. This feature induced a strong emotional response in the shape of technically accomplished and fully committed playing from the Capricornus players. However, they also produced playing of delightful lightness and great delicacy in the second movement of Richter’s Trio Sonata in A minor, op 4/6 and some affecting cantabile playing from the muted strings in the second movement of the B-flat Sinfonia, VB 59. It was overall a concert that provided an immensely satisfying conclusion to my mini tour of festivals.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Andrea Gabrieli: Le peine de mon cœur

CD cover A Gabrieli La peine de mon coeur Sebastien Wonner

Sébastien Wonner harpsichord
63:00
encelade ECL2102

For those of us whose minds turn to epic choral music or madrigals at the mention of the name Andrea Gabrieli, it is a useful antidote to be reminded of his career as keyboard player and his publications of keyboard music. This repertoire is undoubtedly an extension of Gabrieli’s improvisation skills at the organ, and many of his pieces such as the intonazioni and ricercars would have served liturgical purposes in the lavish services in St Mark’s Venice – we have frequently introduced Gabrieli’s largescale choral pieces with relevant intonazioni to establish the tonality. However, it is useful to hear this music, as well as keyboard arrangements of madrigals and motets, on the harpsichord to remind us that it is perfectly effective, freestanding solo keyboard repertoire. Gabrieli was a truly international musical figure, using Venice’s status as a world power to incorporate pan-European influences into his work. He samples French and German secular songs as well as the music of his Italian contemporaries in his work, but the wonderful spontaneity with which Sébastien Wonner imbues his performances constantly emphasises the improvisatory aspect of these works. He plays a fine 1999 harpsichord by Matthias Griewisch, while the distinctive tuning with its occasional spicy discords permits parallels to be drawn with Gabrieli’s exact contemporary Veronese – more remarkably still in 1585 musician and artist collaborated on a production of Sophocles Oedipus with Gabrieli composing the choruses and Veronese designing the costumes! O to have been a fly on the wall at that performance – both Gabrieli’s music and Veronese’s costume designs survive, so await the attentions of some enterprising opera company! Clearly there is much more to Andrea Gabrieli than his magnificent church music, and this excellent CD emphasises just one further aspect of this kaleidoscopic musician.

D. James Ross

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Recording

La Notte

CD cover La notte Cicic Illyrian Consort

Concertos and pastorales for Christmas Night
The Illyria Consort, Bojan Čičić
65:52
Delphian DCD34278

Opening with the predictable Vivaldi concerto La Notte and concluding with a premiere recording of a reconstruction by Olivier Fourés of Vivaldi’s string concerto RV270a Il riposo – per il santissimo Natale, this fascinating programme takes us on a wide-ranging tour through repertoire by Biber, Vejvanovsky, Rauch, Finger and Schmelzer. Since hearing Bojan Čičić play at the St Magnus International Festival in Orkney a couple of years ago, I have sought out his eloquent performances of Baroque music. This recording with his own ensemble The Illyria Consort is no disappointment, with stunning accounts of mainly unfamiliar repertoire. I found it difficult to put my finger on what appealed to me so much about Čičić’s playing, until a performance he gave in a small kirk in Orkney of the great Bach solo Chaconne moved him and all of us to tears, and I realised the extent to which his performances relied on his personal passion for his instrument and for the repertoire. This is what comes through in these performances too, as the wonderfully detailed and precise readings are injected with intelligence, musicality and above all passion. A major factor in the attractiveness of this CD is the crystal-clear Delphian sound, supervised by Peter Baxter and a hallmark of this excellent Scottish label. Just like a puppy, this revelatory recording is not just for Christmas, but provides deeply engaging insights into an important strand of Baroque string music.

D. James Ross

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Recording

CAMPRA – MESSE DE REQUIEM

CD cover Campra Messe de Requiem Daucé

Ensemble Correspondances, directed by Sébastien Daucé
69:56
harmonia mundi HMM 902679

There are doubtless many like myself who first became aware of André Campra’s sublime Requiem through the recording made by John Eliot Gardiner in 1979. This new version, by one of today’s most renowned French ensembles, is very different, taking its point of reference not from Campra’s period as maître de musique at Notre-Dame in Paris (1694-1700), but a new theory as to the provenance of a work that has always been surrounded by mystery as to its original purpose and date of composition. That is explained in the scholarly note by Thomas Leconte in harmonia mundi’s booklet. It is too complex to go into detail here, but it makes a convincing argument for suggesting the Mass is unlikely to have been written for either Notre-Dame or the chapelle royale, where Campra became one of the sous-maîtres from 1723. That leaves open the suggestion that it was the Mass directed by Campra in 1700 at the Église des Mathurins for the funeral service of Louis Boucherat, Chancellor of France.   

That the Requiem was therefore most likely written for less grand surroundings than Notre-Dame or the Chapelle Royale probably explains the reasoning behind the substantially smaller forces in the present performance than are usually heard in the work. Given its nature, which chooses neither to stress the terror of death, nor to bathe in grief, but rather create an ambiance alternating between spiritual rest and the joy to be found in the light and peace attained in death, the more intimate forces are highly effective. This philosophy is clearly laid out in the opening words of the Introit, where the blissfully flowing polyphonic lines of ‘Requiem aeternam’ (Eternal rest …) give way at ‘et lux perpetua’ (and let perpetual light) to delicate dancing rhythms that remind us that Campra is today best remembered as the creator of the opéra-ballet. This dual approach dominates this infinitely touching work, which in keeping with the style of French sacred works of the 17th century flexibly alternates the chorus with a smaller petit-choeur that participates in solos or solo ensembles. It is one of the measures of the outstanding qualities of Sébastian Daucé’s performances that he has not only artists of the known stature of soprano Caroline Weynants and alto Lucile Richardot included in his petit-choeur, but less familiar names such as haute-contre Rodrigo Carreto and tenor François Joron also make distinguished contributions. The latter’s beautifully sustained line in Agnus Dei I is just one of the highlights of a performance that overall is of the highest quality.

It is something of a paradox that having persuasively convinced us that the Requiem has nothing to do with Notre-Dame, the subtitle of the CD is ‘& Les Maîtres de Notre-Dame de Paris’, the remainder of it being devoted to the 17th-century predecessors of Campra. Of these, the earliest is Jean Veillot (ca1600–62), composer of a simple, but effective Ave verum corpus, who succeeded his teacher Henry Frémart in the post in 1640, going on to become a sous-maître at the Chapelle-Royale, a familiar route for French composers. Veillot’s successor at Notre-Dame was François Cosset (ca1610–ca1673), substantial portions of whose six-part Mass ‘Domine salvum fac regem’ are included, as is the source motet by Veillot. The notes wax lyrical about the quality of the work, which seems to me a rather unremarkable setting largely employing old-fashioned Renaissance polyphony, but also syllabic homophony. The disc is completed by two fine motets by Pierre Robert (ca1622–99), one, ‘Tristis est anima mea’ being a brief setting of the words of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, ‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death’, the closely-worked polyphony of the early part giving way to rhetorical emphasis at the point of Christ’s accusation to his disciples, ‘Vos fugem capietas’ (You shall run away).

A splendid addition to Ensemble Correspondances’ distinguished series of recordings of both sacred and secular music of the French Baroque.

Brian Robins

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Recording

Bach: St John Passion

CD cover Bach St John Passion Cantata Collective McGegan

Cantata Collective, Nicholas McGegan
114:41 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Avie AVIE 2605

This performance of the Johannes-Passion from the Cantata Collective under Nicholas McGegan was recorded live in Berkley in Passiontide 2022, and bears the hallmarks of what to many people is their essential annual Passiontide experience: singing or playing in a live Bach Passion. Throughout its performance history from the year in which it what first written – 1724 – till the final performance in 1749, Bach used the same set of parts – revising them each time. So – apart from the second performance on Good Friday 1725 when, in the year devoted his second, chorale-based, cantata cycle – Bach made a considerable number of changes which he never used again. All subsequent performances were essentially similar and we have no means of knowing whether changes were dictated by constant trial in search of perfection, changes of circumstance, or some other external circumstance as McGegan says in his liner-notes.

The band has two upper strings to a part, so numbers fifteen in all, playing period instruments. The Collective is 12 singers, to which are added six ‘soloists’ with an independent Evangelist and Jesus in addition to those who sing the arias, none of whom – as far as I can judge – takes part in the choruses: in this sense, it is an old-style performance, with McGegan directing from the sparingly used harpsichord.

The Evangelist Thomas Cooley is ideal – nimble, and with a story-teller’s command of the German narrative; the bass who sings Jesus is clearly articulated and the basso continuo when he sings is suitably weighted. The chorus in the turba parts are a bit careful so some of the interchange in the central section before Pilate lack that edge some professional singers can bring to it, but their Lasset uns den nicht zerteilen is splendidly managed, as is the chorale in Mein teurer Heiland.

The aria tempi are moderate, and of the aria singers, the soprano is too wobbly for my taste, as is the chorus member who sings the Maid (and that goes for the top line in the chorus throughout); but the others are splendid – the Arioso Betrachte and the aria Erwege lyric and rhythmic, Eilt is well balanced and the Alto in Es ist Vollbracht sustains his line with the gamba well. The best of the arias is Mein teurer Heiland. Here the lyrical 12/8 cello obbligato is truly matched by the bass, Harrison Hintzsche, whose experience as a consort singer makes him for me the star among the solo singers.

What makes this performance so distinctive is the energy and commitment of the ensemble. We hear not just one more concert performance, but a radiant Good Friday liturgy, where John’s Gospel comes alive. From early times, it has been John’s account of the Passion that has formed the centre-piece of Good Friday’s worship, so underlining the theological truth that in the crucifixion and death of Jesus the work of redemption has been triumphantly concluded and new life has been freely offered. Bach understood this, so immediately after Jesus dies on the cross, a jaunty cello obbligato in 12/8 launches the aria Mein teurer Heiland in D major, the key of trumpets and resurrection. This sense that the crucified Christ reigns from the cross as he inaugurates his new creation pervades the whole of this recording, and McGegan’s infectious energy is almost tangible throughout. As a modern HIP version, it will not please the purists on every page, but as a record of the power of the Johannes-Passion to inspire and move, it scores highly.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

JS Bach & JC Bach: Motets

CD cover Solomon's Knot Bach motets

Solomon’s Knot
Prospero PROSP0073

This recording of the Bach Motets (BWV 225-230) also includes Ich lasse dich nicht (BWV 1164 – or Anhang 159) and four by Johann Christoph Bach: Lieber herr Gott, Der Gerechte, ob er gleich, Fürchte dich nicht and Herr, nun lässet du deinen Diener in Friede fahren. These motets from the Alt-Bachisches Archiv, known to have been performed by Johann Sebastian in the last decade of his life, are performed at A=440 with a higher pitched organ, while the motets by Johann Sebastian are sung at A=415 with a slightly more substantial instrument and occasionally a large violone.

These performances are committed, with Solomon’s Knot’s characteristic off-copy style of singing, meaning that their ensemble is faultless. Their admirers will love these readings recorded in the generous acoustic of the Bachkirche in Arnstadt. There are no instrumental doublings such as Johann Sebastian provided for the funeral motet Der Geist hilft (BWV 226). Lobet den Herrn (BWV 230) is sung with the voice parts doubled, and the liner-notes refer to the possibility that the genesis of this motet (whose authenticity has sometimes been questioned and the only one where a basso continuo line is absolutely essential) may be a movement from an early cantata, re-purposed for this new use. For the rest, all is much as you would expect.

But not everyone will be content with some of the individualistic mannerisms of each singer. The continuing tradition of formation in boys’ choirs in Germany like the Thomanerchor and the Tölzer Knabenchor ensures a seamless unanimity of sound which few mixed groups of professional singers can emulate. While the two sopranos of Solomon’s Knot give their parts a controlled and pure line in Johann Christoph’s Fürchte dich nicht, in Johann Sebastian’s more complex setting they, with most noticeably the tenors, revert to the ‘one-size-fits-all’ type of voice as their fall-back mode. Notes tied over the bar-line are given a push rather than being left to float in the air, and the squeezing of long notes in a 20th-century manner give a very different overall sound to that produced by groups like Vox Luminis. Listen to the first soprano and the tenor in the Aria section of BWV 225, Singet dem Herrn, for example. Sometimes their obvious enjoyment of this great music unfetters the soloistic inner self that lurks beneath the corporate discipline demanded of all consort singers, as in bars 29ff of BWV 228, Fürchte dich nicht. BWV 229, Komm, Jesu, komm seems to fare a little better than Singet dem Herrn in this respect, perhaps because the singers are in more reflective mode. Perhaps the best performance is in Jesu, meine Freude (BWV 227) where the OVPP lines and the robust organ playing combine to give both a sense of the inherent drama and also a more convincing ensemble.

This is classic singing by highly disciplined professional singers at the top of their game. Whether you think it is a suitable vehicle for the closely wrought, highly ornamented and imitative style of Johan Sebastian’s concerto-style writing in the motets is a different question. For me, the high quality of Solomon’s Knot’s musicianship does not outweigh my sense that this style of singing often fails to deliver the clarity and unanimity of vocal sound that Bach’s intricate and instrumental style of polyphonic writing demands.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach sous les tilleuls

CD cover Bach sous les tilleuls

Loris Barrucand, Clément Geoffroy harpsichords
53:00
Encelade ECL2303

What music was performed under the lime trees in the Zimmermann café gardens on Wednesday 17th June 1733, when the flier for the concert by Bach’s Collegium in Leipzig advertised a new harpsichord of a kind never heard before? With this question, the two harpsichordists Loris Barrucand et Clément Geoffroy devise a programme of transcriptions for their two Goujon-based instruments – one by Émile Jobin (1983) and the other by Jean-François Chaudeurge (2014). They introduce us to their transcriptions of two of Bach’s Vivaldi-based concerti for organ, BWV 593 & 596, and end with BWV 1060, taking their model 1061 which survives in two versions – one for just two harpsichords – from which they derive the licence to make this simple version of the triple concerto in A minor (BWV 1044). 

The rest of their programme offers us some chorale preludes – Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (BWV 659), Wachet auf (from BWV 140, but one of the six Schübler Preludes, BWV 645), a transcription of the Sonatina that opens BWV 106, the Pedal-Exercitium (BWV 598) and the great Passacaglia in C minor (BWV 582) which may have been conceived for a pedal harpsichord.  

The latter is the most successful version on the disc to my mind: the clarity of the fugal writing, the echo effects and the nimble arpeggio work all score well on this pair of full-blooded harpsichords. The Pedal-Exercitium is a reminder of how strong the bass resonance of the harpsichord is; but the treble can sing too, as the other chorale preludes and the slow movements show. The playing is neat and controlled, and I am glad they chose to record their disc in the spacious acoustic of a chapel rather than outside under the lime trees of Leipzig! 

What are we to make of these versions? While not autographs by Johann Sebastian himself, they continue his practice of repurposing and adapting which is well-documented in his own re-scoring of Vivaldi’s work and his remaking of several concerti for single instruments in their presumed Köthen originals for harpsichord when he took over to the Collegium in Leipzig in 1729. One of the few bonuses of the Covid lockdown that imposed such restraints on large-scale music-making was to spur musicians into activities like this: we have a welter of chamber music versions of larger scale works, and more CDs of the Sei Soli than we could dream of, as musicians re-discovered their instruments and explored new acoustics that helped us appreciate again how essentially polyphonic Bach’s compositions are – even when they are scored for a single line like BWV 598, the Pedal-Exercitium. 

So this disc is to be welcomed, not only for its musicianship, but for its reminder of the extraordinary multi-layered sound world in which Bach composed, adapted and re-purposed his music. 

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Meetings with Bach

CD cover Meetings with Bach

Emelie Roos recorder, Dohyo Sol lute
proprius PRCD2098

This is another CD that has its genesis in the Covid-19 lockdown, when musicians were constrained in their performance possibilities. It drove this pair – lutenist Dohyo Sol and recorder player Emelie Roos – outside, where they (like the harpsichordists Loris Barrucand and Clément Geoffrey in BACH SOUS LES TILLEULS which I reviewed earlier) imagined the sonorities available in the Bach household when Wilhelm Friedmann invited the lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss to stay in 1739. They imagine that this was when Johann Sebastian improvised a free upper part to Weiss’s A major Suite for lute that was catalogued as BWV 1025.

Bach’s reported practice when playing basso continuo of improvising an additional fugal or canonic line rather than playing a conventional harmonic chord sequence is illustrated in Richard Stone’s arrangement of the 5th organ trio sonata in C (BWV 529) for his chamber ensemble, Tempesta del Mare, where Stone departs from a strict transcription of that trio sonata by introducing a fourth part for a viola, largely in canonic imitation, to supplement Bach’s three original voices. Bach’s ability to hear the implied harmonic structure of a particular melodic line is revealed by his pupil J. F. Agricola’s comment that Johann Sebastian would sometimes play one of the suites or partitas he had written for a solo instrument on a keyboard, filling out the implied harmonies:

“   …their author often played them on the clavichord himself and added as much harmony to them as he deemed necessary. In doing so he recognized the necessity of resonant harmony which in this kind of composition he could not otherwise attain.   ”

Such implied harmonies were occasionally actually written out by Bach, as in the Lute suite BWV 995 that is based on BWV 1011 (the ‘Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor) or the opening sinfonia to cantata BWV 29 which is based on BWV 1006.i (the Violin Partita 3 in E major).

This implies that the six partitas and sonatas for solo violin and the six ‘cello suites, although composed for a single instrument, are conceived primarily as compositions of a polyphonic nature, with the fugal and imitative lines being implied or suggested rather than being fully written out. This is what this duo accept as the basis of their versions, giving us a lute version of BWV 1008.

It is interesting to see these principles of implied polyphonic structures being worked out in the solo flute sonata by C.P.E. Bach – here transposed from A minor to C minor to suit the recorder. As in the lute transcription of BWV 1008, the dexterity of the players is in no doubt. We have an extended essay in “less is more” and are challenged again to take acoustics seriously as part of how we ‘hear’ the complex polyphonic structures of the 18th-century sound world in the years before every note and marking was written down in the definitive scores of printed editions. It also challenges our preconceived notions about the part that improvisation played in the music of Bach and his contemporaries as it grew beyond the improvised ‘divisions’ expected of cornetto players who were the predecessors of the violinists for whom Vivaldi wrote his concertos.

This is another CD that makes the case for enlarging our horizons as to what constitutes HIP.

David Stancliffe  

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Recording

Bach: Partitas

CD cover Bach Partitas re-imagined Pinnock

re-imagined for small orchestra by Thomas Oehler
Royal Academy of Music Soloists Enseble with guests from The Glenn Gould School, directed by Trevor Pinnock
69:47
Linn CKD 730

Under the heading of Re-imagining Bach comes a project spearheaded by the Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, who produced this CD for Linn with the RAM’s crack chamber orchestra in 2003. He got the harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock to direct the players in a version of the Partitas orchestrated for a small chamber orchestra of 44331 strings plus flute, oboe, cor anglais and bassoon by Thomas Oehler, following Pinnock’s masterly direction of a similar group performing Józef Koffler’s orchestral version of the Goldberg Variations.

As a preparation for the project, the group met with Pinnock to read through Oehler’s score and to hear Pinnock play and expound the music on the harpsichord. A month later, they were ready to perform and record the score in Snape Maltings, with Freeman-Attwood producing.

Unlike some of the versions of – for example – The Art of Fugue, scored by the Netherlands All-of-Bach group under Shunske Sato for a variety of period instruments and voices, this performance not only scores harpsichord music for orchestra, but uses modern rather than period instruments, so readers beware!

But – unlike many of the versions of Bach played by the long-suffering Petroc Trelawny on Radio 3’s “Bach before 7”, where listeners seem to want to hear their Bach played on almost anything except what it was actually written for – here there is much to be learned about the process of re-imagining. Two-part textures ‘are split between different instruments and surrounded by a wash of expanded harmonies’ (Pinnock) and ‘the range of orchestral colours and textures . . . did not emerge from a pre-conceived subjective idea born in the mind of a self-calculating composer, but from what the original score suggested’ (Oehler).

I recommend listening both to this CD and to the All-of-Bach The Art of Fugue online, and pondering what the experience brings: the traffic is not all one-way!

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach: Concertos & Suite for recorder and strings

CD cover Bach Hugo Reyne Les Musiciens du Soleil

Hugo Reyne and Les Musiciens du Soleil
73:00
HugoVox 004

The experienced recorder player Hugo Reyne now lives in Les Sables d’Olone, where with his like-minded players who form Les Musiciens du Soleil, he has set up a festival and his own label, HugoVox. After a lifetime of pursuing French music of the Baroque – 11 Lully albums and 4 Rameau as a start – this CD is devoted to Bach, and he has reimagined three concertos and the Second Suite for recorder – using the two Altblockflöte that Bach wrote for in F and G.

He starts with BWV 1056 which has come down to us in a version in F minor for harpsichord, whose original form may well have been an oboe concerto from the Köthen period. He finds close similarities with Vivaldi’s recorder concerto in C minor (RV 441), and transposes it into C minor. For the second, he explores the recorder in G in an adaptation of BWV 1053, the harpsichord concerto in E transposed into C: he notes that the material was also used by Bach in cantatas 169 and 49. For the third, he steps beyond versions of harpsichord concertos to an adaption of Cantata BWV 209, Non sa che sia dolore, whose sinfonia and two arias, scored for traverso, soprano and strings are adapted for recorder and transposed up a tone into C. For the most part, the leading violin takes the vocal line in the two arias (Nos. 3 & 5), leaving the accompanying strings as they are. This reveals one of the potential weaknesses of the CD: while the viola and ‘cello/bass lines use single strings, there are three first and two second violins, so the texture is not quite as transparent as it might be with single strings all through.

There are fewer problems with the Second Suite, again transposed up a semitone into C. The French style of notes inégales is delightful in the Rondeau and Saraband, and if the 16′ bass is sometimes heavier than I would have liked, that is surely a matter of taste. He finishes the disc with a favourite encore, the Larghetto from BWV 1055, the harpsichord concerto in A.

I enjoyed the musicianship of the players and of Hugo Reyne in particular. The recorder can sometimes sound rather inflexible when compared to the traverso, but not here: it is flexible and melodically fluent in such capable hands. And his touch for how to repurpose music that has come down to us in its latest recension as harpsichord concertos, probably for the Collegium concerts in the Zimmerman Café, with shadowy pre-echoes of earlier versions seems entirely plausible. Bach reused his material in exactly this way and we should beware of thinking that the most recent version is automatically the best or most ‘finished’.

The pre-existence of trio sonata material that later found its way into concertos, organ works and many of the arias in cantatas that have come to be regarded as ‘solos’ with accompaniment should alert us to the great wealth of material which Bach was in the habit of repurposing himself when an opportunity arose.

David Stancliffe